02017cam a22002417 4500001000600000003000500006005001700011008004100028100002100069245018200090260006600272490004100338500001500379520099800394530006101392538007201453538003601525700002301561710004201584830007601626856003701702856003601739w3771NBER20161209224552.0161209s1991 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aMukerjee, Swati.10aMeasurement of Output and Quality Adjustment When Hedonics Cannot Be Usedh[electronic resource]:bAn Illustration for the Day Care Industry /cSwati Mukerjee, Ann Dryden Witte. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc1991.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w3771 aJuly 1991.3 aIn this paper, we develop time series estimates of the output and quality of output for day care centers in the U.S. for the 1970s and 1980s. As far as we are aware this is the first time that a time series for day care output and quality has been published. Our results using both physical and dollar measures of output show very rapid growth in output, particularly during the 1980s. We find that both the real price of care in centers and the staff/child ratio in day care centers declined between 1974 and 1988. These declines may reflect either improved productivity or a decline in the quality of care provided by day care centers. Clearly, these declines merit further investigation. We illustrate a method that may be used to adjust physical measures of output for changes in quality when, as is true in the case of day care, no single market clearing price is available. The method involves the estimation of cost functions and the calculation of marginal costs for producing quality. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web.1 aWitte, Ann Dryden.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w3771.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w377141uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w3771